


between states

by philosoverted



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: (hahaha oh god that tag), ...at least from season 3, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon May Joss This, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Unrepentant Fluff, set early/mid season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 03:43:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7919221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philosoverted/pseuds/philosoverted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carter's amazed when Detective Riley actually makes it to the winter holiday party at the 8th, and not at all surprised when he wants to leave within five minutes. It makes it a little tough to socialize when you haven't bothered to learn any of your coworker's names. [AU early/mid season 4]</p>
            </blockquote>





	between states

**Author's Note:**

> This is shameless fluff.
> 
> ["Most computers, human beings, and elephants are stateful."](http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/stateless)
> 
> I found myself really fascinated by that: the idea of stateful/stateless interactions, and about the conversations Carter and John won't have about the past vs. the ones they might have later and treat as separate from that context. I imagine them having to build new contexts based off the present before they're able to talk about what happened in the morgue, if they ever do (or even feel the need to). And besides - all Joss really needs is to be able to see his face, which is one of the saddest things about the scene in which John's freezing to death in the car: yes, he didn't tell her much, but he really didn't _need_ to.

Carter enjoys the 8th’s winter party. She’s not sure why, exactly; it’s usually hot as a sauna and featuring ambiguous potluck dishes that come in a bowl, but every year she comes back, avoids most of the food, hears about the same kids. She wonders if maybe it’s because it reminds her of family reunions growing up, dredging up some warm feeling that makes her more amiable toward the entire business.

Scanning the room, she sees John at the back of the room. _John._ He looks so out of place that for a moment she forgets he _works_ here now. And it isn’t that his looks themselves are out of place; he’s dressed nicely, passing for a police detective about as well as he ever does, but she’s just never thought a man who considers parts of the _workweek_ as optional would show for a party after hours.

She supposes he might have some other reason to be here, like a number. The thought irritates her. If there’s a number in this building and he neglects to tell her about it, they’ll be having a conversation.

Carter makes her way back to John with a glass of punch in hand that’s strong enough to bring tears to her eyes: it doesn’t taste as strong as it smells, but like everybody else who’s worked here a while, she’s made that mistake already.

She offers him her glass, not sure why she’d bothered with it in the first place. “Don’t s’pose you like punch, John? Sergeant Nowak likes to top off the punch bowl with a bottle of Everclear.”

Or two bottles. Maybe three. She’s never really been _sure_.

The closer the glass gets to his face, the more the skin around his eyes pinches.  “No thanks.”

“Wise choice,” calls Lionel, walking their way. He’s obviously just arrived, still bundled in a heavy coat, with red ears. “That stuff? Is _jet_ fuel. I’ve seen it take down Mike, y’know, from lockup? And he ain’t exactly GQ fit, if you know what I mean. Built like a tank,” he adds, arms spread away from his body like he’s mimicking a gorilla.

Joss shades her eyes with her hand, suddenly glad Mike isn’t the party type.

Shrugging off his coat, Lionel drapes it sloppily over his desk. “Here, Carter,” he says, motioning at her until she hands him her glass.

Joss watches speechlessly as Lionel carries the glass back to the beverage table. He jabs his eyes around the room in a quick and dirty act of surveillance and then proceeds to pour the contents of the glass back into the bowl all at once, with an obscenely loud _plop_. Beside her, John starts to laugh, a quiet sound that doesn’t carry.

“Nice work, Lionel,” he teases, as her partner saunters back over looking pleased with himself. “Pretty sure at least one or two people in the room didn’t see that.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Lionel turns a lopsided grin on Carter and winks. “You think you can handle this guy? There’s some spinach dip over there with my name on it.”

-

When Carter’s done making her rounds, she finds John right where she’d left him. It’s times like this she’s surprised anyone ever mistakes him for a police officer, not with the way he’s standing now.  “At _ease_ , Detective,” she says, tongue-in-cheek. She's strangely delighted when, whether he’s humoring her or he’d actually forgotten, his posture visibly softens.

Carter notes he’s still looking at the door across the room, watching people shuffle in and out. Either he's bored out of his mind or he's got his sights on something in particular, she’s not sure which. "You on a case, John?" she asks, softly.

Meaning the other kind of case, not that John's first instinct would ever be to think of his actual _job_. John blinks and looks at her with confusion - not his other job, then. Must be boredom. "No, why?"

"The way you've been watching the door, like you're expecting something. And you're back here by the fire exit. Something wrong?"

John half-shrugs, looking uncomfortable. "Never really liked being at parties."

Carter takes it as a fact that any expression of discomfort John makes is an understatement, given that the pain scale for John has a slider from _I'm okay_ to _I'm fine_ , where _okay_ is 'has just been in a car accident' and _fine_ is 'shot without a vest on.'

She hesitates. She hadn’t planned on leaving quite yet, but she’s certainly done with how hot it is in here. Sweat’s starting to gather on the underside of her hair and trickling down her neck.

Decision made. She grabs her coat and shoves her keys into a pocket. "Up for a walk?"

He gives her a grateful smile and follows her through the crowd of coworkers whose names she’s willing to bet he’s never bothered to learn, and partly that pisses her off, and partly she understands.

Once the door to the outside clicks shut behind them, John pauses. He rests his forearms on the ramp rails. The posts creak under his weight, ice crackling from the pressure as he leans outward. Beside him, Carter stamps her heels impatiently against the cold. She tries not to think of her freezing toes: nylons in winter were meant for journeys from a car into a heated building, not strolls in the dark.

As if reading her thoughts, John tries to give her an out. "You don't have to leave the party for me, Joss.”

She crosses her arms over her chest: it’s _freezing_. She can see her own breath, feel the pulse in her fingertips. "You in for a walk or not? Better make up your mind, John. It's too cold for standing around trying to decide if I'm just being nice to you."

Straightening, wordlessly he fishes out a pair of gloves from his coat and starts down the steps. She notices how, even though he's probably had his hand curled around the gloves in his pocket, he never touches their outer surface as he slides his fingers in.

Careful in her heels, Carter takes him up on it when he offers her the loop of his arm. They walk like that, steady and in no hurry, until she’s not sure how many blocks they’ve gone.

There aren't a lot of cars; Joss watches the lights further down the street alternate red to green, the signal evenly spaced and orderly without traffic to tip the balance one way or the other. It's peaceful. Or it would be, if she didn’t have Samaritan on her mind so much these days. Now empty streets make her nervous. It’s a form of artificial order, like homicide going down while missing persons goes up. The entire _city’s_ now a system operating on the premise that the ends justify the means.

If there’s anything she knows after the months she spent on HR, it’s that the ends _never_ justify the means because nothing really _ends_. Once you start down that road, the censoring, the manhunts, the manipulation and murdering, it never stops.

They turn down a side street overhung by skeletal winter trees; parts of the sidewalk beneath their branches are crusted in ice. She’s pulled abruptly out of her uncomfortable thoughts when one of her heels wobbles on a slick patch and she ends up teetering against John. His balance hardly falters: she feels him lean toward her, hand somehow out of his pocket and arm already around her waist before she has time to stumble.

His hands disappear in their pockets again once she’s steadied herself.

"Those your idea of winter shoes, Carter?" he asks dryly, glancing at their feet.

 _Smartass._ Carter rolls her eyes, smiling. "I thought I could get away with leaving my bad-guy-chasing shoes at home for a Christmas party. If I'd known _you_ were planning on showing I would've worn 'em anyway."

They resume their walk at a slightly slower pace. John steers them around a large slushy brown puddle, bits of torn paper and a styrofoam coffee mug floating along the curb. "Because I'm a bad guy?"

"Because I always end up _chasing_ you. Draw your own conclusions, _Detective_."

"All bad guys get chased by Detective Carter. Detective Carter chases me. Therefore..."

"Flawed syllogism, John. What you're looking for is, ' _All people Detective Carter chases are bad guys._ ' And that's not true. I chased down somebody last week when they dropped their wallet by a food cart."

John thinks about that for a moment. "Maybe you _make_ them bad by chasing them."

Carter laughs in disbelief, elbowing him in the side. "So I'm the root of all evil now, huh?"

When that doesn't get a response from him, she cranes up at him to see what the hell he's thinking, why he's gone all silent. But his _face..._

Suddenly she feels like she's back in the morgue. She's slipping into a moment that exists between resignation and fierceness, between being hemmed into a cage and marching out before the dawn. _Between_ , there's John's hand on her cheek and John's lips on hers and John's eyes like they are right now, tonight, all _fondness_.

When John reaches out, brushes a couple strands of her hair back from where they've gotten stuck to her lipstick, she wonders if he realizes. Wonders if the look on her face is the same too, wonders what he saw there, in that room, to make him look at her like _this_.

His thumb brushes her chin, once, right below her bottom lip. "Probably time to head back, Joss, before your toes freeze."

Frozen toes be damned, she'd be _right there_ if he decided to walk to Brooklyn tonight.

-

The street outside the precinct is strangely empty when they make it back; Carter wonders how long they've been gone. Only a few cars are still parked along the curb. "Guess the party's winding down," John observes. He sounds a little surprised.

"It's the punch," Carter starts to explain, but before she can elaborate she recognizes a somewhat-rumpled figure slouched by the door, where it's dry. Lionel looks up as they approach.

"Hey, long time no see. I thought you two _luh-_ I thought you'd headed off somewhere for good. What're you back here for?"

" _Car's_ here, Fusco," Joss says, eyes narrowing. She's pretty sure she knows what almost came out of his mouth, and it's the last thing anyone needs to be hearing right outside the 8th's front doors. "What are _you_ still doing here? Isn't that _your_ car?"

John interrupts, sounding amused. "Lionel, don't tell me you drank the punch."

"I did _not_ drink the punch. My _car_ won't start. Okay? I'm waiting for some probably sixteen-year-old kid to come out here in a tow truck and condescendingly explain to me how I've got a junk car that stalls when it's cold. _Where are your jumper cables_ , like I'm just some dumb old guy. When my boy cleaned it the other day he took the cables out, alright?"

There's a pause, and then John says, in a tone of such quiet incredulity that Joss has to look straight up and bite the inside of her lip to keep from laughing, "you let your _kid_ clean that car? _Lionel_. That's _disgusting."_

Taking pity on her partner, Carter steps up to Lionel and bumps his shoulder with her fist. "C'mon Fusco, I got cables in my trunk. Speaking of, John's probably just mistaking the trunk of your car for _his_."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Lionel mutters darkly, and John's quiet laughter follows her all the way down to the curb.

**Author's Note:**

> This may or may not have come from me mentally trying to build the setup for the poly-negotiation Joss/John-Harold/Grace thing I want to write, _regardless_ of the marked absence of both Grace _and_ Harold in this. :P


End file.
